Two Tips for Agriculture Enthusiasts Who Want to Set Up Farms
Posted on: 10 March 2020
If you have always been interested in agriculture and would like to set up a farm, you might find these tips helpful.
Stick to hardier varieties of vegetables or fruits if you want to grow crops
When you first venture into the world of agriculture, it is best to limit your crops to varieties of fruits and vegetables that are hardy. The reason for this is that there are many variables that can affect how bountiful and healthy a harvest your crops will produce. Things like pests (including wild rabbits and mice, as well as many different insects), unseasonal forms of weather and vandalism can all play a role in whether or not your efforts to grow crops prove successful.
From both a financial and a psychological standpoint, it is best to pick hardier crop varieties (such as kale and onions, both of which are tolerant of drops in temperature). Unlike a person with a well-established farm, who can, therefore, afford to take risks, those with new farms (such as yourself) are more financially unstable and are likely to struggle if even a couple of their small crops fail.
Additionally, if you're just starting out in the field of agriculture, it is best not to set yourself up for failure by choosing fragile crop varieties, as if your first few crops fail or yield just a few sad-looking vegetables, you may lose faith in your farming abilities and give up before you have had a chance to establish your agricultural enterprise.
Grow one crop that is free from a specific allergen and start using an allergen testing service
Because there is so much more awareness about allergens and the risks that things like nuts and gluten can pose to those who are allergic to them, there is an increasingly large demand for crops that are free from specific allergens. As such, one step you could take to turn your farm into a profitable venture would be to grow at least one crop that is completely free of, for example, nuts.
If you decide to do this, you will have to use an allergen testing service. This service will consist of experts checking for allergens in the samples of your crops which they examine. Doing this regularly will ensure that you will know for certain that the harvest from this crop has not been contaminated by nuts and can, therefore, be truthfully and legally described as 'nut-free'.
Even when you take the cost of using this testing service into consideration, you could still stand to make a lot of profit from growing this type of specialist crop, for which there is great demand.
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